Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is drawing attention to a Republican call for offshore oil drilling.snip

House Republicans brought Gingrich to the Capitol on Wednesday, partly to revive media coverage of their speech-making protest in the chamber, now in its fourth day.

The rest of Congress is gone for August recess, but several Republican House members have been speaking on the floor of the closed-down chamber, calling for a special session to vote on drilling and energy.

Gingrich did attract more camera crews, and he used the opportunity to point to what may be the GOP's next strategy: If Democrats refuse to hold a separate vote on oil drilling, Republicans could try to block the votes needed to keep government running past September 30.

"Are [Democrats] really prepared to close the government in order to stop drilling?" Gingrich asked. "Because I think the country will find that to be a suicidal strategy."

The precise maneuvering of a shutdown threat is complicated, but it revolves around the fact that key government spending bills expire when the fiscal year ends September 30 and Congress must vote next month to keep the government operating.

One of those spending bills, for the Department of the Interior, contains the hot-button provision banning offshore oil drilling on the outer continental shelf. If that bill expires, as it is set to do at the end of September, then so does the drilling ban. Republicans believe a majority of the House opposes the ban, and thus a vote on whether to keep government running could also become a vote on whether to allow offshore drilling. Watch House Republicans demand a vote »

The parliamentary possibilities are numerous. But Republican House Leader John Boehner's office thinks the votes are there, on both sides of the Capitol, to support drilling and energy expansion.

Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith confirmed there are many options on the table for September, including a shutdown threat.

"If Democrats want to block what a majority of the House and Senate want, they can proceed with a strategy that would in effect shut down the government," Smith said.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office responded quickly with a statement from spokesman Nadeam Elshami. "Democrats will not shut down the government," he wrote, "but it is not surprising Newt Gingrich would raise that threat since he and the Republican Party shut down the government in the 1990s."

Gingrich's political game of chicken with then-President Bill Clinton led to two government shutdowns in late 1995 and early 1996.

The moves backfired, and polls showed more Americans blamed Gingrich. But he defends his decisions.

"We shut the federal government down, for a brief period, in order to get a balanced budget," he told CNN Radio. "That was a deliberate systematic strategy."

Now the strategy seems to be an all-out effort to heap pressure on Pelosi, who opposes offshore oil drilling and has so far not scheduled a vote.

Democrats call the floor speeches and photo opportunities a "hoax." House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer sent out a statement saying, "Republicans are doing nothing but pushing the failed Johnny-one-note policies of the past."